BALMAIN SPRING 2022

A new, post-Covid spirit of transparency and honesty helped pushed Olivier Rousteing to add some very emotional touches to his Spring 2022 collection, with many elements referencing a recent accident and very long recovery. A year earlier, he suffered some burns in an accident. Hospital rooms, bandages and gauze wraps suddenly became a big part of his life—and as he began sketching, Rousteing found himself translating those many months of doctors and physical therapy into the collection’s multitude of bands, weaves and dangling straps. In addition, the sets of repeated golden bands adorning the models’ hands riffed on the ring sets that the designer adopted to help hide his scars during recovery. By embracing that previous pain and celebrating the power of healing, Olivier Rousteing was able to translate them into beautiful components of one of his strongest collections.